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Screwworms Are Back. Here’s How We Eliminated Them the First Time

Screwworms used plagued the livestock industry for decades

Who Was Nancy Grace Roman?

The trailblazing astronomer lends her name to the newest space telescope slated to deliver unprecedented insight into the universe

Beavers Don’t Just Build Dams, They Build Nations

A journey to the hidden settlement of nature’s busy hydro-engineer

9 Books We’re Excited About This June

Sea monsters, Niagara’s toxic legacy, and animal orgasms

The Cephalopods Are Coming

Fossil records reveal Earth’s mass extinctions are followed by a rise of ocean cephalopods. They’re rising again.

Latest Stories

Bumblebees Have Chimp-Like Problem-Solving Abilities Despite Tiny Brains

New research may upend the cognitive primacy of humans and other large-brained vertebrates

Solving Feynman’s Formula for Eating Well, Parking Your Car, and Finding a Mate

The 50-year mystery suggests humans may be more rational than we thought

Read Stories from Our Newest Print Issue: Precarious

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Schrödinger’s Kittens Are All Grown Up

Offspring of the most famous thought experiment in physics are now testing the very fabric of the universe

The Most Precarious Day in the Universe

On the same day the world descended into war, physicists saw reality itself unraveling

Illustrating the Precarious

How our cover artist sees these quaking times

Did a Roman Legionnaire Wear Eyeliner?

An ancient makeup bottle turns up far from its Egyptian home

The Ancient Roots of “Sewer Socialism”

Urban planning wasn’t so different 4,000 years ago

Is This Why Science Advances One Funeral at a Time?

As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work

Food Noise Goes Quiet with GLP-1s

But there’s a lot we still don’t know about these intrusive thoughts of food

The Impossible Strength of the Testosterone Myth

Scientists keep knocking it down but it keeps roaring back

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After the Black Death, Italy’s Oak Trees Came Back

Turns out getting rid of large swaths of humanity benefits nature

When a Century-Long Rodent Invasion Ends

The invertebrates definitely come out to play

The Cold War’s Accidental Whale Observatory

Built to track enemy submarines, the Navy’s underwater listening network inadvertently revealed that whales may be singing across entire oceans

The Bad Seed and the Problem of Blame

A conversation with behavioral geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden about the heritability of vice

A Light in the Dark: Finding the Good in the Natural World

Is it absurd to think that science can inform our values?

How ‘Tiny Shortcuts’ Are Poisoning Science

Seemingly harmless data tweaks are undermining the integrity of the entire field. We must define the problem to prevent it

Stupid in the Land of Oz

We’re not in Kansas anymore, but you knew that